


Chiaroscuro

by elise_509



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 1940s, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artist Steve Rogers, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Period Typical Attitudes, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers is Not a Virgin, Unbalanced Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-06-24 22:52:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19733308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elise_509/pseuds/elise_509
Summary: Bucky thought he was okay with Steve making extra money as a life model. But that was before Steve became someone else's muse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting on my computer for years, so I figured since I'm so rusty, I would try to actually finish it and post it.

“So how was it?” Bucky grunts as Steve closes the door behind him, dropping his worn leather artist's case onto the rickety kitchen chair with a thud. Bucky had lifted that thing once and been surprised that someone as slight as Steve could lug such an awkward and heavy weight halfway across the city three times a week for class. 

Steve shrugs in response to Bucky's question as he unbuttons his heavy winter coat. Bucky notices his long fingers fumbling with the task; his joints always get so stiff in the cold and the idiot’s clearly forgotten his gloves yet again. His cheeks are flushed, but the rest of his face is drained to ghastly white. His lips are chapped near splitting and his blonde hair is darkened damp with a rapidly melting dusting of snow. 

Bucky ignores the part of himself that wants to get up and fold Steve’s hands between his, rub them until the color comes back to Steve’s pale skin and he can curl and uncurl his fingers without wincing. 

Instead he flips another page in his magazine and offhandedly presses Steve for more details, as if he’s not desperate to know exactly what happened.

“A shrug ain’t helpful, Steve. How was it really?”

“Fine. Sore and stiff from sitting for so long, and the studio was freezing,” Steve says simply, a bit disgruntled. He goes to the closet to hang up his coat. His next words are muffled, as he needs to step halfway into the closet and lean practically face-first into the row of jackets in order to reach the hanging rack. “Next time I’ll have to work a blanket into the setup just so I don’t catch pneumonia.”

“Next time?” Bucky swallows around the words, making sure that he doesn’t sound too surprised or too interested. 

Steve turns and looks at him then, his gaze tired and his mouth pulled into a tight frown. 

“It’s good money, Buck. I can hardly turn it down.”

Bucky knows better than to argue, even though he wants to. If he wants Steve to walk away from this modeling gig, the worst possible thing he could do would be to say so. 

Steve shuts the closet with a definitive click of the latch. 

“I still don’t get why the prof wants to draw your ugly mug anyway,” Bucky forces a snort, tossing the magazine onto the coffee table and leaning back into the couch. The rickety springs squeak under his shifting weight. He folds his hands behind his head and cocks an eyebrow at Steve. 

“He’s not drawing my face,” Steve corrects as he moves about the kitchen, slowly gathering items he needs to make his nightly ham and cheese sandwich. His step hitches and he pauses a moment, like he’s just registered how that sentence sounded. “Well he is, but not just my face.”

Bucky pushes himself up from the couch, sighing to himself.

“Relax, Stevie. When ya said you were gonna be a nude model, ‘s not like I thought it was your face he was after. Probably, ya should be flattered.”

Steve matches Bucky’s sigh with one of his own, seeming to fold in on himself in a mere moment. He sets down the loaf of bread and crosses his now empty arms across his stomach.

“Professor Laurent says I’m perfect for this because he can see the exact way my skin drapes and stretches over my bones.” Steve mumbles, letting that comment land before moving on, getting on with things. He grabs a knife and starts slicing the bread. “Called me a ‘living skeleton’.”

The knife is too dull and it rips through the bread jaggedly under Steve’s rough pressure, Steve evidently none too happy about Laurent’s comments. Bucky crosses the room and stops beside Steve, setting a hand on Steve’s shoulder. The fabric of his white dress shirt is worn soft and threadbare under his palm; no wonder the guy is so cold. 

“Steve,” He starts, his tone so serious that Steve actually stops what he’s doing and looks up at him, blue eyes flashing with concern. For a moment, Bucky considers telling him that he doesn’t like this situation, doesn’t like the idea of some other man’s eyes all over Steve’s body, but there’s no way to say that without saying all kinds of things that simply can’t be said. 

“Steve.” He begins again, changing course. “Hate to say it, but Frenchie sounds like a real creeper. You make it sound like he’s dissecting you, not drawing you.”

Steve smiles slightly, but it’s a bitter, sad kind of smile.

“It kinda feels like it,” he agrees, more to himself than anything, and Bucky doesn’t know what to say to that.

*******

Steve subtly tries to shift just enough to take the pressure off of his hip. When he’d chosen this pose for the evening’s session--lying on his side, legs akimbo, head pillowed against one folded arm while the other is loose and outstretched--it was for the sake of comfort. Twenty minutes later, the hard, unforgiving wood of the platform is slowly burrowing a bruise deep into his skin, and all he wants is to move.

Professor Laurent is still working, however, eyes darting back and forth between Steve’s form and his work on the easel, charcoal gripping the newsprint as his right hand moves swiftly and freely over the page. His concentration is intense and Steve doesn’t want to ruin it by asking for a break, so he summons up his willpower and sets his mind to ignoring the dull throb that’s working its way up to sharp pain. 

He stares at the professor, figuring that if he can just focus on the work itself, it might take his mind off the ache. He might not be able to do any drawing of his own, but he can at the very least study a subject in the meantime. Minutes tick by as Steve evaluates Professor Laurent’s appearance with a calculating artist’s eye: the warm olive skin tone, the hair so black it seems tinged with blue, save for the stray strands of grey around the man’s temples. The shadows of his jaw line are sharp, as are his cheekbones, but his chin is gently rounded. His mouth is soft and wide, his eyes slightly almond-shaped and his nose more Greek than classical Roman. His face is relatively symmetrical, though his neck is perhaps a bit too long in relation to the rest of his body. He’s fit, but it’s lean muscle, not bulky; his shoulders are broad, but not broad enough to achieve that perfect triangularity between them and his waistline. 

The professor has about eight or so inches on Steve, his height pretty evenly distributed between torso and legs. His well-developed muscles shift under the denim workman’s shirt he’d changed into after class, signaling the turn from teacher to practitioner. The shirt and his pants are streaked with paint from previous days’ work. 

Objectively, the man is aesthetically pleasing. 

Subjectively, Steve’s body might be responding in a fashion that could get him thrown in jail if acted upon. He’s becoming uncomfortable in a far different way now.

Steve closes his eyes tightly, thinking of _anything_ else as he subtly shifts the blanket he’d draped over his lower body up to cover his hardening cock. 

“Steven, no.” Professor Laurent’s voice breaks through the silence and Steve inhales sharply, bracing himself for an onslaught of angry words or perhaps even a barrage of fists.

He’s frozen in place as the professor crosses the room. 

“Do you mind if I…?” The question is surprising, and soft. Steve opens his eyes and finds the professor standing beside him, hand gentle on the edge of the blanket. 

“Professor, I…” Steve starts, voice breaking. He’s not sure what’s happening.

“You do not have to hide.” Professor Laurent’s brown eyes are kind, catching Steve entirely off guard. His English is quite good, his French accent barely an undercurrent, but his delivery is still careful and slightly too formal. “The act of artistic creation can be…intense,” he murmurs softly. “To be the subject of someone’s deep concentration and focus is a sensual experience. There is no shame in such a reaction. Your arousal, this does not alarm or offend me.”

Steve opens his mouth to say something, but he can’t find any words. The professor smiles reassuringly, fingers stroking the fabric of the blanket, dangerously close to brushing against Steve’s skin.

“May I continue to draw you like this?” His eyes remain steadfast on Steve’s, and Steve finds himself nodding. The professor pulls the blanket back from his waist, exposing him completely. Steve’s been naked in front of him many times now, but he can’t stop himself from blushing furiously at the sight of his own erection. 

Back at his easel, Professor Laurent flips to a clean page, picks up his charcoal. 

“It is quite different to draw the male organ in its erect state, Steven,” he explains as if this is a normal topic of conversation. “There is far more weight and structure to it, if you will. It is more…” He pauses, turning a word over on his tongue like he’s trying to find the right one. “Active. Due to the issues of sexual propriety in this country, it is difficult to find a model willing to demonstrate this particular state. Thank you for this.”

“You’re…welcome?” Steve tries, unsure how to reply. The corners of the professor’s mouth curl upward.

“You needn’t be embarrassed. You are very beautiful.” 

Steve stays silent at the compliment, not believing a word of it, and closes his eyes again. Despite the fact that his current _situation_ is being encouraged and praised, he finds himself willing it away. The shame of it, of being like this, so clearly demonstrating his arousal in the presence of another man…he feels his face heating all over again. He focuses on the scritch-scratch of charcoal on paper and tries to tune everything else out. 

He’s frankly surprised to find he’s still hard when the professor sets down his tools some time later. His body rarely cooperates so willingly with sensations of desire. It figures the one time he doesn’t want it to happen is precisely when it does.

They’ve been at this for far longer than usual; Steve doesn’t have his watch in easy reach and there’s no clock nearby, but the studio is growing darker, the sounds of the city street below growing more quiet. There’s no one else in the building – even the janitors have long since gone home. It’s late, and Bucky must be wondering where he is.

The thought leaves his mind as the professor comes back to his side. He sits down on the platform alongside Steve’s thighs and reaches out to pull the blanket completely from Steve’s legs. 

If a new pose were wanted, Steve would be directed with words. Apart from carefully arranging props, it’s not common practice to touch life models. But the professor’s hand is on his hip, warm palm against bare skin. His thumb caresses small circles along the sharp lines of Steve’s pelvis, his charcoal dusted fingers spread over the curve of Steve’s hip. When he presses, Steve submits easily, rolling onto his back. 

As Steve looks down the length of his body, his chest starts to rise and fall more quickly in nervous anticipation. He knows exactly what he’s just agreed to with that one simple movement.

He could sit up and stop it, right now, _right now_ , but he doesn’t want to. All he can think is that _someone wants him_ , and it doesn’t matter if that someone is a man, much less a man twice his age. 

“Professor…!” Steve chokes out when the man’s other hand closes around his cock, grip firm and knowing.

“Alain,” the other man corrects, accent coming through strongly now. He begins to stroke Steve’s length slowly, his pace deliberate. His thumb brushes the head on each upstroke and Steve shivers every time. 

“Alain,” Steve tests out the name, finding it pleasurable on his tongue. Enraptured, he watches the hand moving over his length. The feeling is surreal. No one else has ever touched him like this, and god, he wants this. He _needs_ this. 

The professor – Alain, Alain, Steve repeats to himself – is looking at him heatedly, that warmth from before flaring into something much stronger. His mouth has fallen slightly open, breathing heavy with excitement. His tongue darts out to lick his lips once, and he makes a small noise like a moan stifled into a whimper. His eyes are trained not on Steve’s cock, but on his face, and Steve can’t tear himself away from that desiring gaze. No one else has ever looked at him like this either. 

Steve’s been on the edge for the better part of an hour and he’s not going to last; heat is already coiling low in his gut, spooling in tight. He feels his legs spreading, his toes curling, and he quickly gives up trying to fight it. 

“Oh…oh, I’m co…com-“ 

He doesn’t even have the wherewithal to get the words out. Alain strokes him through it as he pumps himself empty, a hot splatter over his heaving chest. He can barely catch his breath and he nearly panics, confusing the overwhelming pleasure that wracks his body with an oncoming asthma attack. 

But the panic lasts only for a brief moment. Steve may be relatively unacquainted with pleasure, but he’s quite intimate with pain. He knows the difference. 

When he comes back to himself, the blurriness in his vision and hearing slowly clearing, Steve realizes that Alain has opened his own trousers and is working himself to his own completion. His strong fingers are wrapped around his long, slightly curved cock, the skin much darker than the rosy flush of Steve’s own. He doesn't leak the way Steve had; his body doesn’t tremble. But as he strokes, he stares at Steve dazedly, a fine sweat breaking across his brow and his breath pushing out in short, heavy pants. 

Steve looks down at himself – sticky come a mess over his bony chest, skin blotchy pink, his cock now nearly limp, and sloppy against his skinny thigh – and he doesn’t know what the professor can possibly be seeing that has him looking so _gone_. 

“Steven… _Steven_ ,” Alain repeats, voice deep and urgent, a moment before he curls forward, drawing inward on himself. Steve is surprised to feel the wet warmth of the other man’s come splash warm and wet against his thigh. He had expected the professor to shoot over himself the way Steve had, and Steve is startled by how aroused he becomes watching Alain purposely angle his cock to spill his come over Steve’s skin.

Alain breathes out a shaky laugh, sounding almost relieved, and rests his hand on Steve’s leg, fingers spreading through the cooling mess. Steve doesn’t say anything; even if he had fully caught his breath, he’s sure he would’ve nearly stopped breathing again as Alain regards him. As it is, he lies there and tries to control his shaky inhales and exhales, waiting for the other man to make the next move. 

Steve hasn’t the faintest idea what to do now. 

“This was all right?” Alain asks, hand moving from Steve’s thigh to Steve’s wrist. He turns over Steve’s arm so his palm is face up, and he traces Steve’s heart line with the tip of his finger. 

Steve nods, words yet escaping him. 

Alain folds Steve’s hand in his, brings it to his lips to press kisses to his knuckles. 

“Please tell me you will sit for me again, you beautiful boy.” 

Strangely, Steve’s first instinct is to argue, to say that he is not beautiful and has been considered an adult for three years now. But he tamps down the urge and nods instead. He sits up, thinking that the mention of a next time is a signal that this time is over, and is surprised when Alain leans over and presses a gentle kiss to his lips. 

“Stay here. I will fetch you a damp cloth so you may clean yourself before you dress.” Alain rises, tucking his cock back into his trousers and fastening them without a hint of shame.

Steve watches him walk away before starting to gather his own clothes. 

There very well may be a chance that he doesn’t have a clue what he’s getting into here. That he may be in deep water before he even realized he was swimming. 

He should be concerned. 

He’s not.

*******

The two girls that exit the classroom first glance in his direction, and he’s treated to a pair of radiant smiles before they go their own way. Bucky grins to himself as an airy giggle floats back down the hallway in their wake. He briefly contemplates turning on his heel and catching up with them, but remembers that Steve had specifically asked him not to chase any skirts in his class.

Steve has to see them on a weekly basis, and Bucky supposes that with his track record, he can’t exactly blame Steve for his caution. Steve has mentioned that the women in his class are kind to him – not kind in that they want to go out dancing, but kind enough to treat him with respect, treat him like a person. Bucky doesn’t want to mess that up by turning Steve into a “friend of _that cad Bucky Barnes._ ” 

Steve likes this class. He can afford it, he likes his peers and his professor, he’s learning a lot while earning consistent praise for his work, and he’s even managing to pick up some cash on the side with this modeling bit he’s doing. Bucky _would_ be a cad if he messed that up. 

Bucky ducks into the room, nodding hello to a couple of the other male students as they pass by. He’s picked Steve up often enough that their faces are all becoming familiar, and he’s becoming familiar to them. He expects to find Steve at his usual easel, packing up his things, but the easel is empty and clean. Steve’s things aren’t anywhere nearby. 

“You seen Steve?” Bucky asks the last person in the room, a tall, red-haired fellow with thin wire-frame glasses. The guy shrugs, and then nods his head toward the small office that is sectioned off from the rest of the cavernous studio. 

“Not for awhile. He’s probably back there with Laurent still. Your buddy’s quite the teacher’s pet.” There’s something in the man’s tone that Bucky doesn’t like but can’t quite put his finger on. He’s being snide, but there’s something else, something sly and knowing, maybe disgruntled. 

Bucky’s not that surprised. Well-mannered Steve Rogers always was a favorite with his teachers, even the ones forced to repeatedly punish him for getting into scraps with the rude older students out in the yard. Bucky believes most of the school staff at the orphanage secretly rooted for Steve’s one-man crusade against bullies. Their obvious favor didn’t exactly endear him to the other students, and it wasn’t like Steve was Mr. Popular to begin with. 

Bucky ignores the gut feeling that Steve’s classmate is meaning more than he’s letting on and heads toward the office door. It’s half open and as he gets closer, he can hear someone speaking. The words aren’t English and Bucky can’t understand.

He’s about to knock and let himself in when one more step forward allows him a clear view of Steve and his professor. They’re looking down at some sketch unrolled on the table. Or rather, Steve is looking at the sketch, a faint blush creeping up his neck, while the professor’s dark eyes are locked on Steve. 

The professor’s hand is on the small of Steve’s back. It looks both possessive and intimate, and Steve isn’t doing a single thing to stop it. If anything, he seems comfortable, as if this is hardly the first time such a gesture has been made.

Bucky swallows around the lump in his throat and takes a step back, pausing for a few moments to gather himself before calling out Steve’s name.

He gives it a second before moving, allowing ample time for Steve to realize Bucky’s walking in. He still knocks on the door far too loudly before pushing it slowly open. 

There is a foot of space between Steve and his professor now, and if Bucky didn’t know Steve so well, he’d venture a guess that an untrained eye wouldn’t have found anything amiss. But Steve is rolling up the drawing quickly and with less care than he shows anyone’s work, much less a piece he’d been staring at in wonder not moments before. And Bucky hasn’t seen that guilty look since Steve used to try and convince his ma he fell down on the way home from school rather than getting beat up in a back alley.

“Stevie, I been waitin’--you ready to go?” His voice is tight. In fact, his whole body is wound like a spring. 

Steve glares at him for the use of the nickname in public. 

“It’s not my fault you’re waiting--I’ve _told_ you I don’t need a chaperone home, you lug.”

“I’m the one who’s gonna have to scrape you up off the pavement if you get into it on the way back, so why don’t you let me be the judge of that.” Bucky’s trying to joke but the tension bleeds through, the words snapping from his mouth. Steve’s professor is looking at him with faint interest, one eyebrow quirking upward over his statement.

Steve slides the rolled up vellum into a telescopic tube, caps it, and slings it over his shoulder along with his knapsack. He picks up his supply bin and his portfolio case. Before this class, Bucky had no idea art came with so many accouterments. Steve looks like he’s about to fall over and even though they’ve had and settled this argument many times over, Bucky is compelled to try one more time.

“Can’t we rent you a locker here –”

“Not throwing away perfectly good money so I can store my things where they can be easily stolen.” 

“Then let me carry –”

“No,” Steve cuts him off, jerking away from his reach. “I got it, Buck.”

“It is nice to have such a caring friend,” Professor Laurent smiles at him, and Bucky’s returning grin is more of a sarcastic smirk. He can’t tell if the other man picks up on his disdain.

“I keep tellin’ ‘im to appreciate me more but the stubborn ass doesn’t listen,” Bucky retorts and Steve huffs beside him, hefting his bag to better distribute the weight across his small body. 

“I thought you wanted to leave?” Steve cuts in. “I’ll see you on Thursday, Alain.”

“Au revoir, Steven, Steven’s friend.” 

They walk down the long hall, down three flights of stairs, and out to the city street before Bucky loses the battle and starts in on Steve. He won’t bring up what he saw, because honestly he doesn’t want to know-- _especially not if it’s true_ \--but he’s too worked up to not say _something._

“ _Alain_?” 

“That’s his name,” Steve mumbles. He’s already walking stooped over from the weight of what he carries, and he keeps his eyes focused on the ground. 

“Can’t he just say Alan?” 

“No, because Alan is not his name.” Steve stresses the nasal A’s, making Bucky’s suggestion sound ludicrous. 

“‘Alain’ is pretentious.” 

“It can’t be pretentious, Bucky, it’s just his god given name. What’s your issue with it?”

“His other students call him by his first name?”

“Some do,” Steve shrugs. 

“Since when do you speak French?”

“It’s just his name, Buck,” Steve glances at him, annoyed. “I can say his name without knowing the entirety of the French language –”

“No, I heard you. Before, he was speaking French to you.”

“I’ve picked some of it up…still don’t understand half of what he says.” Steve brushes it off, doesn’t ask when Bucky heard it and how. 

“Picked some of it up during your private modeling sessions, you mean,” Bucky mutters, kicking a piece of crumpled up newspaper that tumbles into his path as they cross to Astor Place. He shoves his hands into his pockets, fingers curling into fists once out of sight. 

“Is there something you want to say, Buck?” Steve stops at the top of the stairs down to the subway, turning to face him. He looks directly up at him, challenge sparking in his gaze. “Spit it out.”

Bucky hates Steve sometimes. Hates that he doesn’t back down from a fight and that he’s not scared of the truth. 

“I just don’t like him.” Bucky tries to meet Steve’s stare, but can’t manage it for more than a moment. He casts his gaze downward to the dirty concrete, swallowing down more bitter words. 

“Because he’s French?” Steve scoffs, clearly not believing that for a second.

“You know that ain’t it.” Bucky kicks another piece of litter into the wet gutter. “Before you get in a proper snit about it, I don’t _know_ what it is about him. Can’t put my finger on it, just feel it in my gut.”

“Well drink a Coca Cola and tell your gut to shut up,” Steve shoots back and starts down the stairs. He tries to dig in his pocket for the nickel fare, sending his storage bin rattling and portfolio banging against his thin legs. Bucky sighs and quickly darts down to head him off.

“I got it,” He cuts Steve off at the bottom of the stairs, the lines of frustration easing from Steve’s face as Bucky flips a coin into the air with his thumb then catches it in his palm. He forces a grin, slips the payment into the slot in the turnstile, and steps aside with a flourish. “After you, Stevie.”

Steve scowls, but it’s not a real scowl, and it softens to a smile as he juggles all of his things over the wooden arm and huffs off toward the platform.


	2. Chapter 2

Alain’s gaze rests heavy on Steve’s body; Steve can almost feel the way his eyes trace the slightly bowed line of his back, over the swell of his ass, follow down the straight lines of his legs. He feels his bones and his skin during these nights, aware of each breath in and out, the way the hard wood platform warms under his feet but does not give, making his muscles ache more and more as the evening ticks by. 

He sneaks a glance toward Alain, twitching apprehensively. It will only be a matter of time before he sets aside his paintbrush, rises slowly from his seat, and crosses the room to touch him.

It’s been weeks now, and he’s come to know Alain’s body perhaps as well as Alain has learned his. He’s come to know other things too—what it feels like to have the weight of another man’s cock in his mouth; the taste of come on his tongue; the way it feels to rub and rock and thrust until he spills over the defined dips and rises of Alain’s stomach or between his strong thighs. 

His mind wanders now to what they have not yet done. 

Steve is as excited over the prospect as he is anxious. Every time he waits after class for the other students to wander out, he steels himself for the possibility that tonight will be the night that they finally take it further. He wonders what it would be like to have Alain spread him open, push inside him, fill him up. He wants Alain all over him, skin against skin, gasping against his mouth, blurring his senses until all he can feel is pleasure and want and need. 

These evenings have been a delicious escape and he finds himself looking forward to them with a greed he’s only felt for another person once before, but never acted upon until now. He’s used to _wanting_ , but not at all accustomed to getting what he wants. 

Alain sits back on his stool and lets out a long, deep breath. 

“You are restless tonight, Steven.”

Steve blushes immediately and ducks his head, caught out. 

“I’m sorry, I just…” He stops as Alain stands up, waving him off. 

“Do not apologize, it is of no matter. I believe I have accomplished all I am able for tonight.” He wipes his hands on his trousers somewhat carelessly, streaks of blue paint smearing across fabric. He sighs and sets his paintbrushes and palette off to the side of his work table, then glances at his painting with something akin to disappointment. 

The mood shifts abruptly with this, and Steve feels it like a lead weight sinking in his stomach. 

“Oh. All right.” Steve stutters out, relaxing his position. He suddenly feels his nakedness in another way, one that makes him want to move his hands to cover himself. Instead, he quickly moves to pick up a piece of deep purple cloth strewn nearby as the backdrop. He wraps it around his shoulders, seeking comfort in its softness. It’s immediately evident that Alain’s frustration means this night will be ending differently than others, and Steve would like to leave before Alain notices his desperation to stay. 

_Perhaps this is it, then,_ Steve thinks. Tale as old as time, an artist’s muse burning bright then burning out. Whatever Alain found inspiring about him, maybe it’s gone.

He steps down from the platform, cement floor cold under his toes. Alain doesn’t speak as he ducks passed him to collect his clothes from where they stowed in an old secondhand wardrobe Alain uses to store clothes and props. 

Steve opens the right-hand door and grabs his underwear, then his shirt. His underwear is resting loose on his hips and he’s sliding the shirt over his shoulders when he sees Alain approaching behind him in the reflection of the full length mirror that hangs crookedly on the inside of the door. 

Alain remains quiet, a few paces back, so Steve meets his eyes in the mirror. 

“What?” Steve manages to make it sound like a challenge rather than show the doubt he actually feels. 

Alain doesn’t say anything, however, so Steve turns to face him, ready to ask the question again. 

His words are cut off as Alain closes the gap between them, pushing Steve back against the closed half of the wardrobe. Steve gasps against his lips as Alain crushes their mouths together. 

Alain’s hands scramble down to Steve’s waist, shoving his underwear from his slim hips, then rushing back to his shoulders to push the shirt from his shoulders. Without a word, Alain lifts him off his feet, underwear in a pile on the floor and his shirt trapped around his elbows, pressed between his body and the door. 

He instinctively wrapped his legs around Alain’s waist before he fully realized what was happening. He grunts as Alain presses tight to his body, nearly knocking the wind out of him. 

“I can’t paint you when I can touch you.” Alain kisses him again, and then his lips sear a hot path down his neck. He pulls back and looks at Steve with heavy-lidded eyes, panting breathlessly as his fingers trace Steve’s collarbone. “So fragile, I fear I will break you into pieces.” 

“You won’t.” Steve gasps as Alain’s hard cock presses against his, Alain still fully clothed and rubbing over his naked body.

“But I want to, Steven. I want to split you open and crawl inside you until we are a mix of jumbled parts and you are me and I am you.” Alain’s finger is at his entrance and Steve doesn’t want to stop him. He urges down, groaning against Alain’s mouth as Alain slides his finger in. “Tell me, tell me you want me to fuck you, Steven, I am going insane from trying to stop myself from taking you. I cannot draw, I cannot paint, I cannot _think_ , I—”

“God yes, fuck yes,” Steve cuts him off, not needing to be convinced. 

Alain suddenly sets him down, spinning him around to face the closet door. Steve doesn’t have time to wonder before Alain drops to his knees with a heavy, graceless thud and pulls his cheeks apart. Alain’s tongue is inside him before he can even fathom such a thing, and his whole body is electrified by the unexpected intrusion. They’ve never done this before, and he _likes_ it, damn does he like it. Steve keens into it, begging with both his body and his voice. 

Alain uses his fingers and tongue to loosen him. Despite this being new to Steve, he knows the fundamentals of it, knows he shouldn’t rush too fast. But part of him wants to feel it sharply, to ache with it for days, for the next week, until they meet and Alain can take him again. 

“Now, you can do it now, Alain, now.” Steve pushes off the door to turn himself over, and finding Alain on his knees in front of him nearly makes him come. As it is, his cock leaks and Alain quickly licks his tip, gathering the liquid on his tongue. 

He stands and gathers Steve in his arms again, lifting him as easily as air. Steve sucks in a sharp breath as Alain breaches him, the head pushing past the rim of tight muscle. Alain leans in as if to kiss him but they both stop short of doing so, gasping into each other’s mouths as Alain sinks Steve down onto his cock. 

Steve can only whimper and cry out as Alain starts to fuck him, slow and shallow at first, then hard and deep. So deep, Alain buried to the hilt with each thrust and the smack of their bodies echoing loudly across the classroom. Their bodies grow slick with sweat as Alain pounds up into him, and Steve can smell the paint and turpentine on Alain’s skin, the lavender oil in his hair, a faint touch of red wine on his breath. 

He’s so warm, overwhelmed with pleasure, that he feels like he could melt with it, sparking alive and falling drowsy at the same time. His orgasm is building, higher and tighter, something more intense than he has ever felt before. He tips over helplessly, unable to stop himself or even get the words out to let Alain know he’s lost control. 

Alain doesn’t stop, fucking Steve through his peak, breaking away to look down between their bodies as Steve shoots thick ropes of come over Alain’s chest and stomach, drops falling into the dark thatch of hair between Alain’s legs. The sight of it only makes Steve spill again. 

Alain groans and thrusts harder, pounding him against the door. The feeling of Alain coming inside him fills Steve with a strange sense of accomplishment and awe, each spasm of Alain’s body equaling another spurt of wetness and warmth deep inside his own body. The sensation is new and strange, and he immediately wants it again. Alain can have him whenever he wants, if this is what fucking is like. 

He’s still gasping for air as Alain carefully pulls out, sets him tentatively back down on his feet. 

Steve lets out a sharp, unexpected laugh as the reality of what just happened hits him. Alain chuckles lightly, reaching up to touch his face.

“What is funny?” 

“Nothing…” Steve shakes his head. “I just…I thought, for a second, you were growing tired of me, maybe.” 

Alain’s laugh is full this time, a broad smile gracing his face. 

“Steven, I am mad with thoughts of you. _Mad,_ ” He steps back and gestures down his wrecked body. “This is clear, no?” 

“Yeah, yes. This is clear,” Steve repeats, and breathlessly pulls Alain back to him.

*******

Bucky glances across the room toward Steve’s sleeping form. He’d come home from art class tonight acting differently—slightly out of it, but not in that way he got when he was coming down sick. More like he was constantly being jarred out of a dream.

He’d pressed Steve about it to no avail, receiving only vague, side stepping answers in return. Every so often Steve would smile to himself, or blush nonsensically out of nowhere, then seem to catch himself and put his face back in place. 

When Steve had undressed for bed, there were three streaks of blue paint on his lower back, suspiciously like fingerprints. Bucky swallowed around the lump in his throat and pointed them out as if it mattered little, like Steve must have brushed up against something merely by accident. 

Steve had flushed pink and spun around comically like a cartoon character to try and look at his own back, like a dog chasing its tail. He stammered out an excuse and ducked into the bathroom quickly. 

Steve sleeps soundly now in the dim light of their shared bedroom, and he doesn't stir when Bucky rises, mattress springs creaking loudly with the movement. 

The living room is darker, its windows facing the courtyard and not the street, but Bucky easily finds Steve’s art things stashed away in their usual corner. As he pulls out the bin of paints and brushes, Steve’s portfolio tips to the floor with a thwap that echoes jarringly in the night quiet. Bucky swears under his breath and freezes, straining for the sound of Steve waking up at the commotion.

A few moments pass. Nothing. 

He breathes a sigh of relief and very carefully picks up the storage tube by its worn leather strap. Steve keeps his finished work in this, his works-in-progress flat in his portfolio case, so he only hopes that Steve hasn’t moved it somewhere else entirely, perhaps hidden it away from prying eyes. 

But no, it is there, right where it was a month ago when Steve first tucked it away. It speaks to the trust Steve has in him, the trust that Bucky is breaking that very moment. 

He turns on the small table lamp so that he can see his crime all the better. 

Then Bucky unfurls the paper fully on the floor, kneeling on the bottom and his hands at the top to keep it from rolling back up. 

The image before him is worse than he ever could have imagined. 

It’s not just Steve in the nude. He’d steeled himself for that, knowing full well that was what Steve was being paid for. 

Steve is naked, but this is not a classical nude suited for a museum, detached and careful and chaste. A study of the beauty of the human form. 

The drawing is wanton, sensual. The lines and shadows of Steve’s body jump off the paper, drawn with an intensity and verve that seems to nearly vibrate before his eyes. His gaze moves from Steve’s parted legs to his erect cock, then up to Steve’s face. 

This is desire; this is lust. 

From both artist _and_ model. 

Dumbfounded, Bucky stares at the drawing for a moment, then rocks back on the heels of his feet, letting the paper curl up. Then he picks up the tube and pulls out the rest of the drawings rolled up inside, letting them fall before him to the floor in a messy, unraveling spool. 

Some are tame, more in line with what Bucky had _thought_ Steve was signing up for, but others…

He kneels again over one that depicts, in soft pencil rather than harsh charcoal, Steve sprawled out on the model’s platform. His hair mussed, lips plump, his cock half-hard against his thigh and his stomach streaked wet. The image sears into Bucky’s brain, his imagination filling in _all_ the gaps. 

Alain on top of Steve, touching him, kissing him, _fucking_ him. Is that come on Steve’s stomach his own or Alain’s? Both? Or had Alain come inside of him, filling him up and marking him as his own? 

Steve looks sated, this drawing having a dream-like, floating quality as if all the pent-up energy channeled into that first drawing had faded into the airy softness of this one. Oh, Alain _liked_ fucking Steve, that much is clear. 

Steve stares out at him from the drawing, and Bucky stares back. Steve was no fool; he must have known what Alain was after, and that could only mean one thing. He’d agreed to it not for the art or the money, but for the plain, simple fact that he wanted Alain to fuck him. 

The thought makes him feel sick. He goes to clutch his stomach and brushes his cock instead, his underwear tented between his legs. 

"Shit," he mutters to himself, pressing the flat of his hand to his dick and trying to press it down, like that has ever worked. Denying the actuality of his body’s reaction and all that it could mean, he scrambles to his feet, leaving the drawings on the floor as they lay. 

At the kitchen sink, Bucky splashes cold water over his face, swearing again as icy drips slip down his throat to his bare chest. He leans against the counter, pressing his cock painfully between the edge and his body, but the pain doesn’t stop a thing. He’s rock hard, and his balls are tight, and really, all he wants to do is go into that bedroom and wake Steve up and fuck him himself. 

“Jesus no,” Bucky mumbles, closing his eyes and trying to will it all away. But his pulse is throbbing in his cock and all he can see is that drawing of Steve, stripped bare, freshly fucked, covered in come, and—

He shoves his underwear down just in the nick of time, grabbing his cock and angling all that sticky mess into the kitchen sink. He bites his lip hard to stop from crying out and what escapes instead is a strangled moan as if he’s choking on his own tongue. 

“Fuck.” Bucky stares at the come-spattered porcelain, shame roiling through him. After a brief moment of absolute bewilderment, the panic sets in. “Oh fuck.” He slams the faucet on and tries to rinse it all away, fumbles to get his still aching dick back into his underwear. Nervous sweat breaks over his skin and his hands feel clammy under the steady stream of cold water as he splashes the evidence down the drain. 

Shutting off the tap, Bucky leans his elbows on the sink and buries his head between his hands, fingers tearing at the strands of his sweat-damp hair. He feels light-headed and short of breath. He’s somehow caught between pleasure and dismay and shock. 

It’s one thing to suspect, it’s another to know, and something else all together to be so turned on by it. 

Bucky clumsily manages to roll the drawings back up, surely out of order, and slip them back into the storage tube. Maybe Steve won’t notice. Maybe he will. Bucky has no explanation if he does.

But this is Steve’s dirty secret, and he probably won’t bring it up unless Bucky does first. 

Bucky shoves Steve’s art supplies back into the corner, switches off the lamp, and decides that the couch is as good a spot as any to spend the rest of this sleepless night. 

And even though his mind runs wild with thoughts of Steve as soon he closes his eyes, Bucky vows then and there to keep his mouth shut.

*******

Steve tries not to react as he emerges from the makeshift dressing room and finds that he and Alain are not alone.

“Oh, um…hello,” Steve stammers, taken aback at finding another of Alain’s students still in the room—the red-headed man who always glares at him, and gives him biting reviews during critique, no less. Steve resists the temptation to grab something to cover himself, maintaining the veneer of professionalism. He is here to model, after all, and nothing more. He squares his shoulders and nods in greeting at the man already down to his shirtsleeves. “It’s Jamie, right?” 

Jamie looks him up and down with an evaluating gaze, his blue eyes cool and dispassionate behind his glasses. 

“Steve.” He nods back, taking off those glasses, and then runs a hand through his red hair before reaching down to begin to unbutton his vest. 

Steve can’t help the panicked look he shoots at Alain, confusion making his heart beat wildly in his chest. 

“Steven! Today, I bring in Jamie to help us.” Alain smiles fondly, putting a hand on Steve’s shoulder firmly and guiding him toward the platform. 

“Uh…I’m sorry, to help us?” 

“Jamie has previously sat for me, yes? So I ask him to return, he will assist in a more complex tableaux for our work.” Alain nudges him to step onto the platform and then turns to Jamie, gesturing for him to join. Steve tries not to stare as Jamie finishes disrobing; he’s about as tall and muscular as Bucky, but his skin is freckled and ruddy. 

Alain whirls away from them both, going back to his easel and setting up one of his largest drawing pads. Steve wants to go over and pull Alain aside, ask him what precisely is going on, but he’s behaving as if this is so perfectly normal that Steve wonders if maybe he missed a step somewhere. Had Alain mentioned this in the afterglow of their last session? Had he just not been listening, merely acquiescing to anything in those moments before his body settled and his mind came back to him? 

“How do you want us?” Jamie asks from behind Steve, startling him with his nearness. His breath hits the back of Steve’s neck as he speaks, and the warmth of his body radiates over Steve’s skin. 

Alain clambers back to the platform, climbing up beside them and taking each of them by their right bicep. He arranges them like ragdolls, a limb here and a limb there, Jamie pressed up behind him with one arm around his shoulders, forearm crossed across his neck and collarbone. His other hand comes to Steve’s waist, fingertips just brushing close to the dark curls between Steve’s legs. Steve’s right arm goes up behind Jamie’s head, hand bringing the other man’s face close to his. 

“He didn’t tell me the first time he did this to me either,” Jamie murmurs quietly to Steve, somewhat victorious, as Alain begins laying out his charcoal. “He’s getting bored, so count your days.”

Steve swallows hard, not sure what to say. Part of him wants to believe that Jamie may just be bitter, but his words strike true at Steve’s core. Of course, on some level he knew he couldn’t possibly be the first model Alain had pulled into his bed, and he hadn’t seriously thought he’d be the last, but…

He hadn’t been expecting this. 

This unceremonious and cruel reminder that he’s an interchangeable prop; as important to Alain as a chair or a lamp. 

“You have a certain appeal, I suppose I see why Alain lost his head a little over you.” Jamie whispers, his lips caressing Steve’s cheek faintly, the words hot against his skin. “You’re pretty, and breakable.” 

“I’m not…” Steve starts, but he doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. 

“He’s going to want me to fuck you.” Jamie’s hand slips forward and he edges his fingers lower, brushing the base of Steve’s cock. “He’s going to want to watch.”

Steve steels himself, not knowing how he’s going to say no…or even if he wants to say no. 

“I honestly wondered if I would even want to, but seeing you like this, knocked down a peg…I have to say it has its merits.” Jamie is growing hard behind him, cock nestled against his lower back. Steve tries to control his breathing, stop himself from reacting. 

They hold that pose for what seems like an eternity, and then Alain reconfigures them face-to-face, Jamie’s broad hand over the swell of Steve’s ass. His fingers grip tight as he urges Steve closer. 

“Beautiful,” Alain says as he tears a sheet of newsprint away and begins to draw anew. “Such graceful lines, your bodies they move even when still.” 

But Jamie isn’t quite still. Every minute or so he shifts slightly, rubbing his growing erection alongside Steve’s. 

“If you don’t want this, you should say so.” Jamie’s eyebrow twitches up, the corner of his mouth curling in satisfaction. Steve sets his jaw stubbornly, seeing the dare for what it is. 

On his own, Jamie might not be who he’d choose, but the thought of another man taking him with Alain watching every move, sketching them as they fucked, it sets something on fire low in his belly. He doesn’t know what he’s getting into, and that in and of itself exhilarates him in a dangerous way. His cock hardens against Jamie’s, and he licks his lips in clear invitation. 

Jamie’s eyes darken and his breath catches, and Steve realizes that for whatever reason, Jamie _does_ want him, and it makes him feel just as powerful as when he realized the same about Alain. No one has ever wanted him before, but Alain did, and now Alain wants to draw him with Jamie, and…

Steve really does want it. He wants Alain’s eyes devouring him while Jamie’s inside him. He’s been starved of this—of being desired, of being touched—for so long that, now that he has it, he will take his fill until he simply can’t take anymore. 

Alain draws them as they begin to kiss, as they start to rut. When Jamie finally lays him down on the wooden platform, Alain arranges their limbs again, legs and hands and cocks and mouths, and makes them stay there on the precipice of it all, hard and aching and not moving, just hands frozen on skin and foreheads pressed together in an almost kiss. 

Steve glances down between them, Jamie leaking and twitching, his own breaths short and shallow as he tries to calm his body. He closes his eyes and Jamie chuckles lightly.

“You really are beautiful, with those eyelashes of yours,” he says quietly. “I hate how much I want to fuck you.”

“Sorry,” Steve mumbles, not at all sorry. 

“He’s still going to move on to someone else soon, you know. If you’re still around he might ask _you_ to do this, next time, with the next one.” 

“Jamie, there is no talking,” Alain reminds from across the room, evidently not hearing what they are actually saying because his warning is warm with amusement, a patrician fondness for a misbehaving charge. 

Steve focuses on the sound of pencil on paper and the feel of his own heartbeat, waiting for either a new pose or for the pretense of it all to drop. 

Two poses and twenty minutes later it does. They take a break, and as he and Jamie stretch out their sore, stiff bodies, Alain comes over to help. He runs his hands over Steve’s calves and thighs as he sinks to his knees at Steve’s feet. Jamie presses behind him again as Alain’s mouth follows the slide of his hands, hot kisses to Steve’s inner thighs, lower stomach. Jamie lifts Steve’s arms above his head, hands skimming down from his hands all the way down his sides. When he drops them he sets to work on Steve’s shoulders and back, massaging his way down to the divot at the base of his spine, above the swell of his ass. 

Alain takes Steve’s length in his mouth just as Jamie starts kissing his neck, Jamie’s finger breaching his body not a moment after. 

“Oh…” Steve gasps, somehow surprised by the sensation of two men at once. It’s not like he didn’t know it was coming, but the reality of Jamie behind him and Alain in front of him, it’s more than he imagined. 

Once he’s worked open and his cock near bursting from the attention of Alain’s talented mouth, the older man steps away and returns to his drawing, leaving Jamie to lay Steve out and see it through. 

Jamie starts to crawl on top of him, lower his weight down while bringing Steve’s legs up around his waist, when Alain clucks his tongue. 

Jamie draws back, leaving Steve stretched out on his back in front of him, and urges Steve’s legs open in a vee. Jamie positions himself at Steve’s entrance and sinks in slowly. 

“Hold.” Alain demands when Jamie is only halfway inside, and Jamie grits his teeth as he stops. Steve sucks in a sharp breath, the stretch of Jamie’s cock so good but not enough, and his muscles clench around the length of it inside him. 

“Oh god, stop or I’m going to come,” Jamie says through gritted teeth, his stomach muscles contracting. 

Frustrated, Steve tilts his hips up.

“Screw him, just fuck me.” He turns his head to look directly at Alain as Jamie shoves in and bottoms out. Alain looks surprised at the disregard for his instruction, but his gaze ticks back to his drawing and his fingers clutch more tightly around the stick of charcoal.

Steve keeps staring at Alain as Jamie begins to fuck him in earnest. Alain’s whole body is pulled taut like a wire and his studying gaze is intense, his already dark eyes blown wide. His hand moves swiftly across the page to try and capture the essence of the movement, and Steve wonders what he’s drawing—Jamie on the push in or the pull out. 

“Hey look at me,” Jamie takes him by the chin and tilts his head back, and Steve finds raw desire there in his face. “You feel so damn good. Do I feel good?”

Steve gasps in response as Jamie hits that right spot inside of him. He nods and reaches up, pulls Jamie down on top of him in a searing kiss. 

When Jamie comes, Steve feels it all the way down to his toes, his finish thundering and violent. Jamie pounds his load right back out of him until it’s dripping down both their thighs. 

Jamie is still thrusting when Steve feels a strong hand in his hair, tilting his head back. Alain is there; his lips find Steve’s and that’s all it takes; he spills over himself, and he bites Alain’s mouth as he cries out, splitting his lip. The tang of blood mixed with the scent of sweat and come fills his nose. 

When Alain pulls away, he steps back, and Steve can see the hard line of his arousal through his trousers. 

“Stay.” He says to Steve, and backs up toward his easel, wiping the blood from his mouth. He then gestures for Jamie to come to him. 

Steve groans as Jamie pulls out, feeling more liquid trailing from his hole, clinging to Jamie’s cock. 

Jamie goes to Alain and drops to his knees as Alain undoes his belt, unzips his pants, and simply pulls his erection out over the waistband of his undershorts.

Steve can only watch as Jamie sucks Alain down. Alain’s hands tangle in Jamie’s red hair and clench his broad shoulders, but his stare never leaves Steve as he lays there, utterly used, on that platform just a few inches from the floor. 

Even as Jamie’s head continues to eagerly bob between his legs, Alain picks the charcoal back up and starts drawing again, his eyes darting back and forth between Steve’s prone form and the page. 

He can’t get hard again, he knows, not this quickly, but he reaches down to stroke himself anyway, his eyes never leaving Alain’s face. That seems to do the trick—Alain snaps the charcoal stick in two between his fingers, his hips stutter, and he comes down Jamie’s throat with a few rough thrusts. 

When he’s done, Jamie rises and simply walks over to collect his things, beginning to get dressed without so much as cleaning up, Steve’s come and his own surely seeping into his clothes. 

Steve rises from the platform slowly, not wanting to show how sore his traitorous body actually is from the night’s activities. Alain stays seated as Steve passes, but reaches out to grab his wrist. 

“Jamie, he follows the directions, so, this is why…” Alain says with a so on and so forth gesture, and Steve realizes that that’s why he’d been left to lay there while Jamie got Alain off. “But,” Alain admits. “I come for you, you beautiful boy.” 

Despite himself, Steve feels his face warm, and his gaze drops to the floor. 

“Do you like this? We shall do it again?” He gestures between himself and Steve and Jamie. 

Steve looks at Alain, a swell of doubt surging up suddenly. Jamie had said this was the beginning of the end. He can’t deny he’d enjoyed it, but would going down this road lead him more quickly to his inevitable exit? 

Alain reaches out, draws a finger down the side of his face, streaking his cheek with charcoal. 

“The other can be anyone, but me and you, we will be the same.”

That doesn’t sound like the end, at least not to Steve. He nods.

“Yeah. Yes. We can do this again.”

*******

Bucky takes a deep breath, then knocks gently on the thin door. A warm voice beckons him inside, and with a shaking hand Bucky slowly turns the flimsy doorknob.

Alain sits behind his desk inside the small office, the sharp planes of his face highlighted by the orange-yellow glow of the small lamp sitting on the corner of the table beside a stack of papers. 

Bucky’s eyes flick around the rest of the space. It’s crowded with stacks of canvasses, leaning against the walls; some stretched and primed, some half-finished. Other sketches and watercolors are tacked up on the bare studs of the walls. The office is more of a shack haphazardly thrown up in the middle of the studio, the wide open space only ever meant as a loft for storage and nothing more. 

Alain looks up at him once quickly and then glances back down to his work, perhaps having expected to find one of his students, but then looks back up with a bit of confusion.

“Yes, may I help you?” 

Bucky opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out. Alain’s eyes narrow in recognition, and he sets down his pencil.

“You are…” He searches to place him. “You are Steven’s friend, no?” He moves his hand as if searching for an answer in the air. 

“James Barnes.”

“Bucky,” Alain snaps his fingers. “I hear him call you Bucky.”

“Friends call me that, yes,” Bucky replies, taking a step inside. Alain smiles at him, getting his meaning. 

“Then for me it is James, I understand. What may I do for you, James? Steven is not here, if you are looking.”

“I know that.”

“And you do not come to retrieve him any longer, I have noticed.”

“Well, you keep him so long after class. You keep him quite busy other nights too.” Bucky says darkly, crossing his arms over his chest. Alain nods and stands up, circling around to the front of his desk. He half-sits, half-leans against it, crossing his legs at the ankles and folding his arms loosely at his waist.

“Of this you do not approve?”

“No reason I shouldn’t,” Bucky comments, meaning exactly the opposite. “It’s honest work.”

“What type of work do you do, James?” Alain asks, eyebrow quirking upward. 

“I work at the shipyards.”

“Ah, hard labor.” To Bucky’s surprise, Alain reaches out and takes one of his hands, turning it palm upward. Bucky holds his breath as Alain traces his fingers over the callouses and cuts. “Honest work as well.” 

Alain looks at his hand contemplatively for a moment, and then stands upright. He’s in Bucky’s space, putting his hands on his shoulders. 

“Your build is strong from this. Broad shoulders, good muscles.” He comments, then takes a small step back. “But I do not suppose you are here to model.”

Bucky doesn’t reply, because he’s not entirely sure why he _is_ here. He just needed to look the man in the eye. 

Alain turns away and goes to a chest of wide, flat drawers, unlocks the top drawer, rifles through it. 

“Come,” Alain gestures. He takes out a few sheaths of newsprint and carries them to his desk, sweeping aside some other work to make room. 

Bucky hesitates.

“I’ve already seen what you…do,” he says. “I don’t need to…” 

“James, come.” Alain replies, clearly knowing that Bucky’s protestations are weak at best. 

It’s not what Bucky expects. 

The first few drawings are just of Steve’s face. Delicately drawn, the lines as fine as Steve’s features. He looks an angel, bathed in gorgeous light and shadow. It’s highly erotic yet innocent all at the same time.

Bucky takes his time looking at each one, caught somewhere between rapture and seething jealousy. 

His breath catches in his throat as the turns to another. This one is not so innocent; it’s downright pornographic. 

It’s clear why Alain keeps that drawer locked. 

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky blasphemes, and for once feeling the sin down to his very bones. He should look away, but he can’t. “Steve let you…he let you do that?”

“That is not me.”

“Well yes clearly.” Bucky spits out, eyes snapping to Alain’s. “But…” He loses his fire as fast as it flares. “But…you know damn well what I mean.”

“I do.” Bucky can hear the smile in Alain’s voice and it makes anger roil through his body all over again. He grips the left edge of the drawing with one hand, fingers crushing its edge. “Steven let him do that.” Alain reaches over, and pries his hand from the paper. “Steven let me see that.” 

Alain takes Bucky’s hand in his and brings it to the side of his own face. 

“I watched him with these eyes, have kissed him with these lips, touched him with these hands. I have done to him before what you see in that picture. I have done much more.” Alain turns his head slightly, and he presses his mouth to Bucky’s palm. “Does that anger or excite you, James?”

Bucky says and does nothing as Alain kisses the tips of his fingers. 

“Are you here to ask me to stop?” Alain asks, sucking Bucky’s index finger into his mouth. Bucky shifts like he might pull away and draws in a sharp, ragged breath. 

“If I asked, would you?” Bucky already knows the answer. 

Alain turns him, the front of his thighs hitting the desk. Bucky grunts, but still tilts his head as Alain’s lips find his throat. 

“I do not think you actually want me to stop, James.” He’s rucking up Bucky’s shirt and undershirt, broad hands hot on his skin. “I think you ask to join us.” 

Alain fully envelopes him from behind, one hand down the front of his pants and the other coming up to circle his neck. Bucky’s mind goes fuzzy, the heat of the tiny room and of Alain all around him making his world spin. 

He’s hard and leaking in Alain’s hand already and it’s what he came here for and at the same time it’s not. Even as Alain kisses his throat and strokes his cock, he can’t stop himself from looking down at the drawing, at Steve, captured there on the page forever in another man’s embrace. 

He thinks of Steve as Alain undoes his suspenders and shoves his trousers and underwear down to his thighs, as Alain nestles his own cock between his cheeks and jacks his hips, fucking him without really fucking him, as he puts one hand flat on his lower stomach and feels every telling twitch of his muscles as his other hand pumps. 

He wonders if this is how Steve and Alain began, a rushed hand job in the late hours, Alain taking what he wants like it was already his. 

“Bucky,” Alain startles him, his name sounding so strange in that accent of his. His teeth tug on Bucky’s ear. “Steven’s Bucky.”

That’s all it takes to make him come, hard and messy all over the drawing in front of him. He doesn’t give a shit; he wants to mark it as his. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, vaguely, it registers that Alain comes as well, a wet splash against the small of his back. 

He wants to slump against the desk and hide his face in the aftermath, but Alain holds him up, a firm arm around his hips and the other still across his shoulders and neck. 

“Wait, wait,” Alain whispers. “Hold.” Bucky stops moving, and just lets Alain keep him steady. They stand in silence, panting, and Bucky can hear the minutes ticking by on Alain’s wristwatch, his hand yet resting on his neck. 

Eventually Alain eases back and turns him around, gently fixing him back in his trousers. Come sticks to his undershirt as Alain straightens his clothes, and Bucky wonders how he’ll be able to sneak into the apartment and get cleaned up before Steve smells this all over him. 

He’s trying to think of something to say Alain leans in and kisses him. It’s a demanding kiss, long and deep and full-bodied, the kind of kiss that Bucky thought would be starting something, not ending it. 

“Alain—” Bucky says his name aloud for the first time, managing not to mangle it too badly. He grabs Alain’s wrists, stilling him. He’s not sure where this is going. 

“The two of you will be like a bonfire. Sparks ascending to the night sky.” Alain makes a flitting upward motion with his hand, and then begins straightening Bucky’s collar. “Steven does not know how he waits for this. He will realize tomorrow.”

Bucky knew the next session was planned for tomorrow night; it was his whole reason for coming today, after all—to do something before the next time. But suddenly tomorrow seems so…well, sudden. 

He doesn’t know how he’s going to go home tonight and look at Steve and keep this all to himself.

“I…oh, god.” Bucky grabs Alain by the forearms and pushes him back, creating some distance between them. 

“Have you been with a man before, James?” Alain inquires, mistaking the panic gripping his face for something else. 

“You were in this room five minutes ago, weren’t ya?” Bucky snipes, and Alain shakes his head. He picks up the come-spattered drawing of Steve and his lover and holds it up between them. 

“No, like this. The way I have your Steven.” 

Bucky can only shake his head no. Alain casts the paper aside carelessly, letting it drift to the floor. Bucky glances after it, opening his mouth to protest, but Alain puts a finger to his lips.

“Hush now. It is already ruined. But I have it up here.” The finger now taps his own temple. “I could re-draw it for you right now if you please. Or I could show you.”

Bucky looks down to the crumpled drawing on the floor and then back up at Alain. 

“I could do to you what was done to Steven. I could teach you how to make love to a man, to have love made to you.”

“Is that what we’d be doing?” The words catch in the back of his throat. Alain shrugs, conceding his point.

“Fine. Teach you how to fuck, then, yes?”

“I know how to _fuck_ , thanks.” Bucky takes a step back toward the door, spinning on his heel to leave. 

“Not a man, you do not. Not Steven.” 

This stops him with his hand on the doorknob, Alain’s words landing just as he intended. He doesn’t have to look back to know that the other man is satisfied with his victory. 

He drops his hand from the door, slowly turning back to face Alain. 

“I can’t go home tonight,” Bucky admits. “Not if you want me here tomorrow night.” It’s as close to asking as he can force himself to get. 

Alain reaches over and flicks off the desk lamp. The office is pitched into darkness, but the bright lights of the studio slant in through the doorway and the half-shaded windows.

He walks to Bucky and presses him back against the now open door, the rickety thing creaking under their combined weight. Their mouths are close, but Alain does not kiss him again. 

“You are welcome to stay here, in the studio, if you wish. There is a couch, many pillows,” he offers, gesturing in the vague direction of where this couch must be. Then he tilts his head toward the exit. “Or you may accompany me home. My flat is but a few blocks away.” He holds Bucky’s gaze for a long moment and then carefully steps back, steps fully into the light. “It is your decision.”

Bucky closes the office door behind him. 

“Let’s go.”


	3. Chapter 3

Steve glances at the clock yet again, frowning as he finds only five more minutes have passed since he last looked. Class usually flew by as he lost himself in the work, three hours gone in the blink of an eye, but tonight every second stretches and stretches. 

He can’t concentrate on this painting at all. He’s barely accomplished a thing, and what he has done looks stiff and dull. Alain is making his rounds and Steve dreads the disappointment bound to come his way when he circles to Steve’s setup. 

Taking a deep breath, he re-adjusts his position on the uncomfortable metal stool and tries to focus, adding a touch of burnt umber to the yellow ochre on his palette to knock it down a bit.

But when brush hits the canvas it’s still not right. Nothing is right.

He frowns and stops all together, staring at the still life in front of him. Across the room, Alain’s eyes tick toward him even as he leans over another student’s shoulder, making a careful suggestion about fixing the mix of colors in the shadowed folds of a piece of linen. Steve can feel Alain’s heavy gaze as surely as he could feel a hand on his leg; he’s obviously noticed Steve’s agitation. 

Bucky hadn’t come home last night.

In and of itself, that’s not too troubling. They’re adults, after all, and he’s not Bucky’s keeper. It’s just that Bucky lets him know if he plans on staying out, and for some reason, the thought of Bucky spending the night in some dame’s bed bothers him more than usual. 

_Bucky_ has been bothering him more than usual, in fact. He’d thought, maybe, _maybe_ , that gaining some sexual experience of his own with other men would make it easier than ever to push those unwanted feelings deep, deep down where they belong, where they’ve been for years. 

Steve really had gotten to the point, not too long ago, when those unbidden longings for his best friend barely troubled him at all any more. It’s not like he _stopped_ loving Bucky, but he’d had a handle on it. A firm grasp of where the boundaries of their friendship lay and what it would never go beyond. He was ready to put that to bed, leave it in the past, and move on. 

Yet somehow, finally giving in to his desire for other men just made his feelings for Bucky all that more real. Nothing was in the abstract any longer, nothing could be denied. He, Steve Rogers, liked men. 

He liked how they looked and how they felt and how they tasted. He liked kissing men and touching men and and being fucked by men. He could no longer ignore it or pretend otherwise. He’s been having sex with Alain—and sometimes others—for going on four months now, and more and more and more, he finds himself thinking: _I wish I could have this with Bucky._

This arrangement with Alain is temporary. While Jamie has told him, with surprise, that he’s lasted much longer than any of Alain’s previous private life models, the inspiration still has an expiration. Alain doesn’t and won’t ever really love him, by any means, and in knowing that from the start, Steve has carefully kept himself from feeling anything stronger than lust for the man. 

But he’s loved Bucky since before he knew what love was, so there’s no keeping himself from that. It’s as much as part of him as is his short stature or his stubborn nature. Steve Rogers loves Bucky Barnes and that’s his lot to deal with. 

Giving up, he sets down his paintbrush and stands. This is no use, everything he’s doing tonight is shit. There’s still fifteen minutes left of class, however, and Alain is walking over to him now, question ready on his lips. 

“Just taking a bathroom break.” Steve passes Alain on the way out the door, not looking at him nor waiting for a response. 

It’s easier to breathe outside. The studio had been quiet but the hallway is even more so, and much cooler without all the lights and the other students and the stale air. The ceiling fans whir slowly above his head as he walks down the wood paneled hall to the men’s room. 

He pushes through the dark green door and lets it fall closed slowly behind him. By this time of night, the Union is usually emptying out anyway, but Steve is relieved to find he’s alone. His shoes click on the black and white hexagon tiled floor as he crosses by the empty stalls and row of urinals toward the sinks. 

Turning on the cold tap, Steve lets the water run for a moment before splashing some over his face. Frowning at his reflection in the mirror, he finds himself more pale and gaunt than usual.

As he grabs a towel to dry his face, the door swings open again.

“Steven?” Alain stops just inside the door, pushing it closed behind him. “What is wrong?” 

“Nothing is wrong,” Steve lies, not turning from the mirror. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think we needed permission to use the facilities.”

“There is no need to be snide,” He says, sticking his hands in his pockets and taking a few, slow, sauntering steps toward him. 

“I...didn’t mean to be snide.” Steve sighs, pivoting to face Alain as he finishes closing the gap between them. Alain peers at Steve for a long moment, studying. He pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. 

He offers Steve one, and after Steve declines, he lights one up and takes a long drag. Steve watches his mouth seal around the cigarette, as he pulls in the smoke and then breathes it out. 

Alain taps ash into the sink and then, with his free hand, reaches out and runs his fingers through Steve’s hair and then gently down the side of his face.

“Something is troubling you.”

“It’s nothing serious."

"Do you lie to me or to yourself?"

"It's just..." Steve sighs again, knowing that there's no way to explain this that doesn't make him seem like a mother hen. "Bucky didn’t come home last night and I haven’t seen or heard from him all day.” 

Alain nods, taking another long drag. He blows the smoke carefully away. Steve leans against the edge of the porcelain sink and watches the gray wisps drift up toward the milk glass pendant lights hanging from the ceiling. 

“I am sure he will turn up. This is why you cannot concentrate?”

“It seems silly when I say it aloud,” Steve shrugs, folding his arms around his middle. He wants to shrink inside himself. “Just not like him, is all.” 

“Care for your friend is not silly,” Alain takes his thumb and forefinger and smooths away the furrow between Steve’s eyebrows. “But you will see your Bucky soon.” 

Steve covers Alain’s hand with his and pulls it down from his face.

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that.”

Alain doesn't disentangle his hand from Steve’s, instead bringing it up to his lips and kissing his knuckles. 

“Bucky? This is his name.”

“No, I mean, saying ‘your’ Bucky. He’s not mine, in any sense of the word.”

Steve pulls his hand away but Alain doesn’t seem troubled by the move, giving him a little shrug of his own. 

“Words are funny things. Actions, these speak louder than words.”

He sets his cigarette on the edge of the sink so he can take Steve’s face with both hands, tilt it up toward his, but Steve keeps his eyes downcast. 

“For instance, I can tell you that I love you, or I can show you. Which means more?” 

Steve’s breath catches in his throat and his eyes snap to Alain’s. He searches Alain’s gaze, somewhere between alarmed and surprised. 

“You don’t love me, Alain,” Steve says pointedly. Alain leans down and kisses him softly, sweetly, hands still gently cupping his cheeks. 

“Even if I say it?” He slips his mouth to Steve’s ear and whispers. “I love you, Steven.”

“But you don’t.” 

Alain smiles slightly and pulls back, turning Steve to face the sink and stepping behind him. 

“This is true. But how do you know? How do you know the words are lies?” Alain begins undoing Steve’s pants as he kisses his neck. 

“I just do. It’s the way you look at me, and touch me, and talk to me. It’s nice but it’s nothing more than…” Steve tries to find the right words. “A passing fancy.”

“A passing fancy,” he repeats, untucking Steve’s shirt and slipping his hands underneath Steve’s clothes. “I like this phrase. But I am fond of you. I enjoy you. I enjoy your body.” 

Steve stirs to Alain’s touch, relaxing just a little into his arms. 

“And you enjoy me.” 

Steve nods. 

“But it _is_ a passing fancy.” 

Steve nods again. 

“I would like to fuck you,” Alain’s teeth pull at his ear lobe. Steve drops his chin to his chest, looking down to Alain’s hands, already down the front of his pants. 

“Then we should probably go back to the studio and start the session.” Steve suggests, his own hands going to Alain’s wrists to pull him away. Alain resists, finally taking Steve’s hardening length in his grasp.

“No, I want to fuck you, only just to fuck you. No pretense, Steven. No excuses. And I want you to watch me fuck you,” Alain jerks his head toward the mirror. “You need to see what I see when I look at you.” 

Steve meets Alain’s heated gaze in the mirror, and he almost asks Alain what it is he does see, but he knows the answer. Alain has said it over and over during their time together, but again, they’re just words. Cheap and easy words like _beautiful_ and _gorgeous_ and _perfect_. Words that Steve could never believe. 

But he _almost_ believes them when Alain makes him forget, and he will miss that when this is over. 

Alain begins unbuttoning his shirt, cock growing insistent against his backside. Steve nods his head toward the exit. 

“You should probably lock the door.”

*******

Bucky waits outside the studio door as the rest of Steve’s classmates trickle out. Some of the girls look his way as they pass, but they don’t smile or giggle. He must look awful, or deranged, or both. He hasn’t shaved since the morning before, and he hadn’t slept at all last night.

Alain had, of course, passed out shortly after he fucked Bucky into the bed, neither a worry nor care to plague his mind. Bucky could have left but he had nowhere to go, really, so instead of wandering the streets of New York alone in the dead of night, he sat beside this near total stranger in the darkness and waited for the sun to come up. 

It eventually did, wholly indifferent to Bucky’s feeling that his world was ending. 

Alain’s _tutelage_ had been enlightening, but the pleasure had been divorced from his mind. Separate, like it was happening to someone else. Because as Alain guided him through the best ways to stroke and to suck and to lick, how to curve one’s fingers inside to open someone up, and how to angle his cock _just so_ to make a man see stars, all Bucky could think about was how Alain had already done all of this to Steve. 

It twists him up, because as much as he hated it, it also made him hard and it made him hot, and he doesn’t know how to reconcile the arousal with the anger. He wants to watch Alain with Steve just as much as he wants to kill the man for laying a hand on Steve, nevermind the fact that his ass still aches from where Alain had fucked him himself. If it were possible to vomit and come at the same time, Bucky might have.

As the sun crept in through the windows, Alain had stirred beside him, and blinked sleepily as he took in Bucky’s countenance. 

“Still, he broods,” Alain’s voice was husky and warm, and after he’d rolled himself out of bed, he’d come to Bucky’s side, traced a finger down the side of his face and then rested a comforting hand on his shoulder. Bucky had struggled not to shrink away from the touch. “Do not worry, Steve’s Bucky. It is not so rare to bed someone you despise.”

Alain exits the bathroom down the hall, now, and walks down the long corridor toward Bucky. His shirt is unbuttoned, his undershirt untucked. 

“You are here.” He greets Bucky with a wide smile and a clap on the shoulder before passing by him to go into the studio. “Come, come.” Bucky hesitates before following him and in that moment, Steve exits the bathroom too, straightening his hair self-consciously and then hitching up his pants so they sit better on his slim hips. 

Bucky bites his lip and turns away, listening as Steve’s footsteps grow closer.

“Bucky, what are you doing here?” 

Bucky pivots to face him and looks pointedly over Steve’s shoulder toward whence he came. 

“Everyone else left,” he starts. “Everything all right?” 

“It’s fine, I—”

“Alain was just…helping you with something in the bathroom?” Bucky raises his eyebrows and Steve blanches. He thought he might get a sick sense of satisfaction from calling Steve out, but the only thing he feels is terrible as the color drains from Steve’s face. “Forget it. I was just worried about where you were.”

“Well, I’m here.” Steve manages, his voice wavering. He squares his shoulders, mustering up that typical stubborn righteousness of his. “You’re a fine one to talk, considering you didn’t bother to come home last night.”

“It’s a wonder you noticed.” He shoots back, and again immediately regrets it. He shoves his hands in his jacket pockets awkwardly and backpedals the comment. “You been so busy and all. But I’m here now. Gonna sit, actually. For Alain.”

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up and his mouth falls open. 

“What?”

“You’ve been doing it so often and pulling in so much extra cash, I figured I could give it a try.”

“You.” 

“In fact, I came by yesterday night and we gave it a go once already.” Bucky pauses, meeting Steve’s shocked stare. “Well, more than once.” He pushes passed Steve to go inside, but he’s only two steps in before Steve catches his elbow and yanks him to a stop with a surprising amount of force for someone so small. 

“Bucky—” Steve starts, then pauses, carefully searching for words. “Bucky, whatever you did, whatever you think you’re getting into… You should go home. This… _job_ isn’t for you.”

Something switches in Bucky as Steve tries to warn him off, send him away. _You’re not a part of this. This is mine._ Bucky shakes off Steve’s hand. His next words are impulsive and slightly cruel, but they’re out before he can stop them. 

“Funny. Alain says I’m a natural.” He takes off his coat and unceremoniously drops it to the floor at his feet. He doesn't hedge this time, doesn’t apologize by quickly backing off the topic. He stands there and lets the words sink in. 

After only a brief moment, the shock seems to wear off and Steve’s mouth settles into a deep, tight frown. He crosses his arms over his chest and stands there as Bucky continues disrobing in front of him. 

“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.” Bucky reminds him as he drops trou. 

Steve pointedly, stubbornly, keeps his gaze locked on Bucky’s face. Bucky knows that look, has seen it on Steve’s face every time he gets knocked down in an alley but gets right back up. Whatever happens next, Steve is going to do it out of pure spite and determination. Bucky just threw down a challenge and Steve is not going to leave it unanswered. 

Anger flares up inside him suddenly, and Bucky unbuttons his shirt and strips off his undershirt with deliberate but fierce movements, refusing to let his eyes drop from Steve’s the entire time. He doesn’t know why he’s mad, exactly. Perhaps he thought that there’d be more to Steve’s reaction than his typical _fuck you_ frown.

Maybe he’d wanted Steve to be set spinning, the way he had been when he first found out what Steve was really up to these nights “modeling” with his professor. 

He _had_ just dumped a lot of information on Steve, after all:

One, Bucky knows Steve has been having sex with men. Two, Bucky had strongly implied he’d spent the previous night doing the same. Then three, he was now here, ready to “model” with Steve when he’d made it abundantly clear he knows exactly what that will theoretically entail. With Steve. 

So maybe he felt that warranted a little more than Steve’s usual steely temper. An extreme reaction in either direction, instead of that look of _oh, you think you know what I’m made of?_ that exudes from every inch of his body basically every day of his life. 

Bucky’s stark naked in front of Steve and already half-hard and Steve still hasn’t moved an inch. Bucky lifts an eyebrow at him.

Steve hesitates for one, telling moment, and then yanks his suit jacket from his shoulders, followed by his suspenders. He strips quickly and efficiently, and hangs his clothes in the closet with practiced ease. Bucky can do nothing but watch as he stalks back across the room to his side and bends down in front of him, picking up his discarded clothes.

He looks up at Bucky as he shoves the crumpled pile of clothes into Bucky’s arms. 

“Hang them up in there.” He jerks his head back toward the closet. 

This close, Bucky can see Steve’s lips are slightly swollen and red from use, and underneath the sterile smell of public bathroom soap, the scent of Alain hangs on Steve’s skin. It puts to rest any of Bucky’s optimistic doubts about what they were up to in the bathroom before he arrived.

Bucky falters, then, and Steve must see it in his face, because his frown shifts almost imperceptibly. 

“Ah, excellent, you both are ready,” Alain emerges from his office with a smile on his face, clapping his hands once. He is either oblivious to the tension in the room, or, more likely, deliberately choosing to ignore it. He knew exactly what he was doing when he invited Bucky here, after all. “Shall we get started?”

“How do you want us?” Steve clears his throat and then asks, managing to sound remarkably normal. Bucky drops his pile of clothes back on the floor and follows Steve to the platform. It has always been situated in front of a long, nearly floor-to-ceiling row of plate glass windows, but for the first time Bucky notices that the middle and lower panes have been fogged with soap to block the view from the outside. There’s a warehouse across the street, most likely empty after business hours, but it’s better safe than sorry considering what Alain gets up to during all these late nights. 

“Here, here.” Alain takes Steve by the hips and guides him to where he wants, his touch so perfectly casual on Steve’s naked body. Bucky tries to ignore the pang of jealousy, knowing how absolutely ludicrous that is at this point. 

Alain gestures for him to join them, waving him closer. 

“Steven, this is okay, yes?” Alain asks Steve and Steve’s head snaps up, looking at him with something akin to surprise. Something tells Bucky that perhaps this wasn’t a question he usually got. 

“Oh, uh, yes. Fine.” He doesn’t sound sure. Then he straightens his spine and nods firmly. “Fine.”

“Let us start with something simple?” Alain suggests, and grabs a chair from nearby. It’s wooden and rickety and the seat is cold when Bucky sits down. Steve lounges on the floor beside the chair, leaning against Bucky with his arm folded across Bucky’s thigh and his head pillowed in the curve of his own elbow. Steve’s hair is soft against his skin, and he can feel each time Steve exhales, a slight push of breath over the curve of his knee.

Steve isn’t tense, exactly, but he’s not comfortable. Bucky glances at Alain, unsure where to put his hands. 

“Here,” Alain’s voice is rather gentle as he places Bucky’s left hand in Steve’s hair, and the other on his thigh, fingers brushing Steve’s arm. “Like this.” Alain rests his own hand on Bucky’s shoulder for a moment, a gesture that’s out of Steve’s line of sight. It’s meant to be reassuring, and it almost is. 

He tries to relax as Alain goes to his easel, but that effort is cut short as Alain picks up something other than a paintbrush: a camera. Bucky sits up a little straighter, tensing, and Steve lifts his head. He glances at Bucky first but then follows his eye line toward Alain. 

“He develops them himself, in the dark room back there,” Steve states, nodding his head in a vague direction, toward a closed door on the far side of the room, and then puts his head back down on Bucky’s thigh with little concern. “No one else sees them.”

“Okay, I just…” Bucky’s protest fades. He can’t pinpoint exactly what had alarmed him, but somehow photographs seem inherently more pornographic and dirty than drawing or painting. He sighs and puts his hand back in Steve’s hair. “You’re pretty cavalier about all this.”

Steve huffs out a sharp laugh, the judgment implied. Bucky gets his point. 

“If you prefer, I could change,” Alain gestures toward his camera, evidently having heard his and Steve’s exchange. “But I thought for this evening you may want to be more active. Free. This way you may move with more ease and frequency, and I can capture more images to work from at a later time.” 

“No, click away,” Bucky nods, cynically wondering how often Alain would be getting his rocks off to these photos of him and Steve in the months to come. 

Alain moves around them slowly, taking his time with different angles and distances, and as he works, Steve seems to _unfurl_ beside him, muscles relaxing and his breath coming in longer, deeper measures. Bucky finds himself stroking his fingers lightly through Steve’s hair, watching the frown lines fade from his beautiful face and his dark eyelashes flutter against his cheeks as his eyes drift closed. 

Bucky is still turned on, cock thick against his other thigh, but it somehow seems beside the point. 

“Shift.” Alain says softly, hand drifting over Steve’s shoulder. Steve slowly opens his eyes and turns his body over just a little so he’s half-kneeling, half-laying beside Bucky now, and rests his chin on his elbow so he can look directly up at Bucky. Bucky barely moves, caught in Steve’s gaze. 

In the background he can hear the click of Alain’s camera, the crank of forwarding the film, but the other man’s presence seems distant now. He looks down at Steve and wonders what his lips would feel like on his skin.

He lifts his hand and gently touches Steve’s mouth, dragging his thumb slowly across his bottom lip. 

Steve holds his stare as he opens his mouth slightly, and Bucky slides his thumb forward across teeth, tongue. He swallows down his own groan as Steve closes his lips around it, his head bobbing forward and back just once, ever so slowly, down to his second knuckle and then up to the tip. His mouth is hot and wet and Bucky’s whole body trembles at the sight and feel of it, already imagining Steve repeating the same action between his legs. 

Steve looks at him before he does it again, his gaze strangely guarded when Bucky’s sure his own face displays his desire plainly. He couldn’t hide it if he tried. 

“You sure you know what you’re getting into?” Steve’s quiet, pulling off his thumb but letting Bucky cradle his face in his palm. Ever since Bucky arrived tonight, they’ve been veering between two extremes of the angry push and the tentative pull, and Steve’s question now is more toward the latter. It’s not challenging. It’s careful, concerned. 

He still thinks Bucky has made some tragic mistake in coming here. He’s saying it’s not too late to back out if he's gotten in over his head. 

“I don’t really understand what you’re trying to prove.” Steve’s left hand slides down Bucky’s inner thigh as he pushes up fully onto his knees. He’s sitting up tall and close enough to kiss now, if Bucky wanted to. All he would have to do is pull him those few inches closer. Bucky dips his head, thinking about those lips on his. 

“I don’t know that I’m trying to prove anything.” That’s a lie, but Bucky doesn’t know the truth. “But I know what he wants us to do.” Bucky tilts his head toward Alain but doesn’t break with Steve’s stare. “And I want to do it.” He pauses. “With you,” he adds, like that needs clarification. 

Steve doesn’t move, doesn’t respond. 

“Alain showed me how.” Bucky assures, not knowing if his inexperience with men is what Steve’s worried about. 

Steve looks at him for one more long moment, expression inscrutable, and then nods. 

“Okay.” He re-situates himself between Bucky’s legs and Alain hums in approval. Then Steve’s hand is at the base of his cock and he’s taking the head into his mouth, tongue swirling around the sensitive tip. Bucky clutches the sides of the chair and gasps, tries to stop the undignified thrust forward. 

He maybe hadn't expected Steve to get down to it just like that.

"Oh, fuck, Steve..." He sinks into the sensation as Steve swallows him further, slipping briefly all the way to the back of his throat. Steve makes a noise like he quite likes what he's doing, maybe for Bucky's benefit or for Alain's, and then does it again. 

“So gorgeous.” Alain crouches lower, getting closer to them. Bucky closes his eyes and blocks out the strangeness of it all, the snap and whir of the camera as this other man artfully documents Steve going down on him for the first time. What is his life that he wound up here, so desperate for his best friend that he’s willing to debase them both just for a chance to fuck him? 

Except he doesn’t exactly feel debased. He knows he should, but maybe it’s crowded out by excitement and arousal. Bucky dares to look down at Steve again and it really matters not at all that Alain is right there beside them. Alain is right, after all, Steve _is_ gorgeous. 

Those sharp cheekbones in stark relief as they hollow with each suck. Those long, artistic fingers of his splayed over Bucky’s heated skin, wrapped around the thickness of his erection. Face pale except those two pink spots of color high on his cheeks. Lips red and wet with spit, Bucky’s dick shining with that and his own pre-come as Steve works his length. 

Steve opens his eyes too, and that beautiful ocean blue is nearly gone, his pupils dilated dark with desire. The thought that Steve wants this just as much does him in. 

Bucky gasps out a warning and slaps a hand to Steve’s shoulder, trying to shove him back, but Steve de-doubles his efforts and only takes him back into his mouth. Bucky comes hard, vision blurring as Steve swallows around him. 

When it all comes back into focus, Alain is kissing Steve, camera forgotten around his neck. Bucky’s come is on Steve’s tongue, his lips, and it drips down his chin as Alain licks it from his mouth. 

Bucky makes a small noise, simultaneously turned on and annoyed, and Alain pulls away and looks up at him with a smile. Alain moves forward and kisses him too, one hand on each of Bucky’s thighs as he lets Bucky taste his own come that he'd just gathered from Steve’s lips. 

When Alain breaks from their kiss, he tugs Steve forward, closer, and kisses him again. He does this two more times, alternating between them. Somehow with each exchange the space between Bucky and Steve grows smaller until Alain merely draws back and lets their mouths find each other’s. 

He and Steve are kissing and it’s better than any dream, any imagining. It’s somehow even better than Steve’s mouth on his cock, more intimate and more _Steve_ and more of exactly what he wanted when he came here tonight. 

Alain is taking pictures again as Steve climbs into Bucky’s lap. Steve’s body is so lithe and slight, Bucky can hold him like he’s nothing, but at the same time having him warm and solid and hard—and god, Steve is _hard_ —against him is an overwhelming but welcome weight. 

Steve slowly starts to rock in his lap as they kiss, and Bucky gets his broad hands around those sharp hips and urges him on, whispers entreaties for him to move as hard and fast as he wants. 

He’s beginning to get hard again, himself. It’s not going to take long. 

“You want to fuck me?” Steve pants against his lips and all he can do is moan his response and kiss Steve again.

*******

The question had slipped out before Steve really thought about it, not that it matters. They both knew where this evening was heading, both had signed up for it apparently with their eyes wide open. But Steve had still _asked_ , like it was something he wanted for himself, independently of any illicit arrangement with Alain.

He does want it. He _always_ wanted it, from the first time he’d felt that pang in his gut and the throb between his legs when Bucky stripped off his shirt in the hot summer sun. Such an innocent thing, just working on Bucky’s mama’s roof garden in the July heat, and fifteen year old Steve had let his eyes trace that sharp line of Bucky’s developing muscles right down Bucky’s chest, down the trail leading into his trousers. And he'd _wanted_ it, then.

And now here he is, letting Bucky know how it as always been. 

Why Bucky is doing this, he’s still unsure. The fact that Bucky had spent the previous night with Alain, doing the very same thing they’re doing together now, means that whatever this is, it’s not about him. Or not only about him. 

He’d never seen Bucky so much as give another man a second look, but if he’d wanted this, all he would have had to do was go to the right neighborhood and ask. A guy like Buck could have anyone he wanted. Why he’d suddenly chosen Alain, or why he’d shown up tonight like this wasn’t a big deal…

He climbs off of Bucky and as soon as Bucky stands too, he pushes the chair away. They easily could have fucked there on the chair, Steve in Bucky’s lap, face-to-face, but that’s not a good idea.

“I need something to lay on.” He says to Alain. He’s made a habit of demanding nothing from Alain, doing what he’s told and moving where he’s moved, but he’s happy to find that Alain complies easily with the request. He gathers a few pillows and blankets and puts some down on the platform, lets Steve arrange the others. Bucky stands there while he does it, eyes following his every move. 

“I…” Steve starts, but doesn’t know quite how to say it. Fuck me like this? This is how we should do it? This is easiest? He lays down on his stomach, pillows beneath his head and chest, and lets the arrangement speak for itself. 

He doesn’t want to look at Bucky while they screw. Or rather, he knows if he looks at Bucky, it’s going to become a lot more than just a screw, at least for him. This seems safer. 

There are two hands on his legs, pulling them apart a little farther, and he knows from the smoother feel of them that they are Alain’s. Someone settles between his knees and the second pair of hands on him are Bucky’s. 

Steve closes his eyes; a glass jar is opened and the closed, metal lid scraping, and then Bucky has a cold finger between his cheeks, rubbing at his entrance. 

“Like I showed you,” Alain murmurs from somewhere behind him, and then it’s only Bucky’s heat near his body. 

Bucky keeps rubbing, hesitantly. 

“Steve…this okay?” Bucky’s voice cracks, betraying his nerves. 

“Do it,” he states, urging his hips back into Bucky’s touch. Bucky breaches him slowly and begins working him open with one finger, then, after awhile, two. Steve wants to tell him he doesn’t need much, that Alain had fucked him not an hour ago, but the words stick in his throat. Bucky doesn’t need to know how often and how easily Steve lets himself be taken by anyone who wants him. Bucky doesn't need to know how desperate he is to _feel_ something, to feel wanted, to feel worthy of someone else. It’s all a pointless stop-gap in the never-ending battle against his feelings for his best friend, and the last thing he wants is for Bucky to discover just how low he’s been willing to stoop to escape his own mind for a short while. 

Bucky is up to three fingers, his other hand resting on the small of Steve’s back, when Alain comes around the platform and kneels by Steve's head. 

“Beautiful boy,” he says softly, pausing in taking his photographs to trace a finger down the side of his face. Then his gaze moves upward, beyond him toward Bucky. 

Bucky’s hand slips free and is replaced by the blunt head of his cock. Steve groans, fingers scrambling for purchase in the thin blankets, as Bucky pushes in. Only a little at first, then back out, and then a little more. Alain had clearly been thorough and cautious in his sexual education the night before. 

Bucky is treating him like he could break, though, and he knows Alain didn’t teach him that. Alain knows what Steve can take. 

He concentrates on each sensation as Bucky pushes in and drags out. 

“Fuck, so tight,” Bucky breathes out, almost in wonder, as he finally seats himself fully inside Steve’s body. Steve can feel the throb of him deep, balls nestled against his ass and the tickle of his pubic hair on his skin. This is what he has always wanted, but it’s not the way he wanted it. 

“You can move,” Steve lifts his head from the pillow so his words aren’t muffled. Bucky groans and then does exactly what Steve says, free to pick up the pace. Bucky is still kneeling upright as he fucks into him, their bodies only really connecting at that one singular point. It’s distant, detached, and Steve is still so turned on that his erection throbs painfully where it’s trapped between his stomach and the blankets. 

“You like this, fucking your best friend?” 

Steve twists his head back to see Alain’s mouth against Bucky’s ear. His words evidently send the same jolt of lust through Bucky that they do through him, because Bucky’s whole body twitches and he groans loudly, like he couldn’t possibly hold it back. 

“That is Steven, no? There beneath you, your cock inside him?” 

“Oh Jesus, Alain, _don’t_ ,” Bucky whines. 

“I don’t believe how you fuck him. Make me believe it, make him believe it. Mean it.” Alain picks up his camera again and Bucky leans forward, hands on either side of Steve’s shoulders. He holds himself above Steve's back as he continues to thrust. He’s not on top of him, but he’s so much closer, his breath on the back of Steve’s neck. 

“Steve, fuck,” Bucky whispers, and Steve turns his head, twists his shoulders, finds Bucky’s mouth with his own. Their tongues tangle as Bucky pounds into him from behind, pace picking up in speed and strength. A small, whining gasp slips past Steve’s lips every time their bodies connect, pushed out of him despite his best efforts to contain it. 

“Dammit, this isn’t enough,” Bucky closes his eyes tightly as he speaks, like he’s trying to will something to change. It must not, however, because a moment later he’s pulling out and pawing at Steve’s hips. “Can you turn over? Please, turn over.” 

Steve goes, and Bucky is on him again immediately, body pressed flush against his and his kiss enveloping. Steve lets himself get lost in the moment as they kiss and rut, their cocks rubbing together between their two stomachs. He’s clawing at Bucky’s broad back as Bucky re-adjusts and enters him again. 

It’s perfect, now, Bucky holding him down with his weight and kissing and fucking him like this, like it’s so damn real. Even if he's not sure where, Steve knows that Alain is somewhere in the room, catching this all with every click of his camera, and Steve hopes, in the back of his mind, that the photographs can capture even a glimpse of what he’s feeling right now. He needs to remember this, to hold this forever.

“Do you…” Bucky starts to ask something, pulling back slightly to look at him. Whatever he was about to say, he changes course. “Is this good?”

“Yeah, uh-huh,” Steve nods breathlessly and kisses him again, not about to let that doubt building behind Bucky’s eyes take over. Not right now. He slides his hands down the slope of Bucky’s lower back, feeling Bucky’s muscles shift as they move together. He already knows this body so well, had studied it for years even without knowing he was. Bucky is his, finally, if only for tonight. “It’s so good.”

He’s been on the edge of orgasm for so long now, and not letting himself get lost in the moment, in the fantasy of what this could be, was the only thing keeping him from tipping over. He lets himself believe, for just a second, that this is how he and Bucky will always be, and in that second he loses control. He comes like the air has been punched out of him, throwing his head back and gasping for breath as he spills over his own chest and stomach. He can feel it splash up the side of his arched neck and Bucky’s mouth finds it, kissing and lapping the sticky liquid from his skin. 

“Bucky…” he sighs his best friend’s name for the first time since they started. He can feel Bucky start to tighten with his own orgasm and pull back, but Steve gets his hands on Bucky’s ass and urges him back, holds him there to finish inside. Bucky comes with his face buried in the crook of Steve’s neck, crying out as he fills Steve up. 

“God, I love you,” Bucky gasps and Steve freezes, but only for just a moment. He’s thankful that Bucky cannot see his face. Bucky doesn’t seem to know that he said it, or if he does, he just continues to gasp against Steve’s neck and slow down the pace of his thrusts until he finally stills. Steve shunts the loaded words aside as something silly spilled out in the middle of an intense moment, and tamps down on the wild beating of his heart. 

He focuses on easing Bucky down as he trembles in the aftermath, kissing his forehead as they both catch their breath. They find one another’s mouths again shortly after and kiss slowly, deeply, until Bucky’s length softens and he slips out. The feel of Bucky’s cock slick and sticky against his thigh is somehow just as intimate as what had come before, and Steve wants to drift in this illusion for as long as possible. 

But eventually, Bucky pulls back, sits up, and something awkward and strange instantly rushes in to fill the space between them. Bucky looks lost, almost scared, and Steve doesn’t know what to say to make that look go away. Doesn’t even know how to react to it, because the bigger part of him is terrified that Bucky regrets everything that just happened between them. 

The snap of one more picture breaks Steve from his building panic. Alain moves his head from behind the camera and looks at him in that kind way he had that very first night, when Steve had been ashamed of his arousal and Alain had allayed his worries. 

He un-loops the strap from around his neck and carefully sets the camera aside. Steve sits up a little as Alain comes toward the platform. Alain bends at the waist and drops a gentle kiss to Steve’s hair, then catches him under the chin with one finger and tilts his face up to his. Alain then kisses him on the lips, so softly, sweetly. 

“Thank you for sharing this with me,” he murmurs, and then Steve watches as he leans over to Bucky. He kisses Bucky too, whispering something that Steve can’t hear. 

He grabs them both rags to clean their messy skin, and as he comes back close, Steve catches the man’s hand. He lets his gaze drop down to Alain’s obvious arousal, the hard line of it more than evident against his pants. Steve's not sure he wants to, but pulling Alain back into this seems like an escape from having to look Bucky in the eye.

Alain shakes his head no.

“This was not about me.” He pushes his hand through Steve’s hair one more time and then backs away, going to re-claim his camera. “I think I will set to work on these immediately.” He gestures toward the dark room door. “I will see you next week for class, Steven. And please do not worry, I will find another life model—though rest assured I will miss painting you, beautiful boy.” 

Alain smiles and walks away before Steve can reply, but that feels okay. 

“Did…did he just fire you?” Bucky asks, disbelieving. Steve turns his head to look at his best friend, somewhat assured to see Bucky’s temper flaring the same even as they sit beside each other naked, his own body still aching wonderfully from the feel of Bucky inside of him, with Bucky’s words, however unlikely it is he meant them, still ringing in his ears. 

“I…no, I think I just quit.” Steve realizes.

*******

The subway car is nearly empty as he and Steve silently walk aboard. There’s plenty of room but he sits down directly next to Steve anyway, his leg pressed against the length of Steve’s and their elbows nudging together. He and Steve are both dressed full tilt for the damp night weather, layers of clothes separating them, but Bucky still feels naked.

Steve has said barely two words since they left the studio, and Bucky’s been too afraid to say the wrong thing. He’d made a choice tonight, taken a huge risk, and Steve had…what had Steve done, exactly? He hadn’t turned him down, no, but it’s unclear what he accepted.

As much as it could change their friendship forever, this _could_ just as easily be written off as a weird, one-time, artsy-bohemian experiment with Steve’s professor. A momentary lapse in judgment they both had once. Or even something Bucky had cornered Steve into, really, when one considers the circumstances. Steve had a love life and Bucky, jealously, barged into it with no explanation. 

Steve, at best, would want that explanation. He only wonders how long it will take before this all comes to a head and he demands one. Bucky wonders what he could possibly say to make this okay again. 

He has already said too much in the heat of the moment, and all he can hope is that Steve was somehow too lost in it to have heard. 

“Buck?” Steve’s voice is quiet, small, beside him. He is looking down at his hands, his face set in a sad frown. 

Oh, they’re gonna do this now then. 

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, glancing around the train. The nearest passenger, an older man in a tweed overcoat, is two banks of seats away, but the loud rumble and rattle of the subway should make anything they say hard to hear. 

“When Alain said you should mean it…” Steve lifts his head and Bucky forces himself to meet Steve’s questioning gaze. He searches Steve’s beautiful blue eyes, trying to find the answer that Steve wants. But he doesn’t know, anymore, and can't guess, so he just offers him the truth. 

“I did. Every second.”

“Did you?” In that moment, Bucky recognizes the look in Steve’s eyes as hope.

“Every word.” 

He takes Steve’s hand, just long enough for him to know but not long enough for anyone else to see. 

Steve smiles.

“Yeah,” he nods. “Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love.


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